Manhattanization Becomes Policy Under Lee and Chiu

This disturbing article in The SF Examiner uses “Manhattanization” as a tag, but shockingly, Examiner Staff Writer Dan Schreiber works hard here to make the term a positive!

Note the utter absence of a competitive or contrary view here to the high-speed development plans on the table [thankfully BeyondChron does]. The article defends Park Merced and Treasure Island Development plans launching into the ‘inevitable need for development’ like this:

“By 2035, the Bay Area is expected to be home to about 2 million more people and 902,000 more homes, with almost all that growth concentrated in existing urban areas.This daunting 29 percent population increase has prompted regional planners to urge local governments to reduce their per-resident carbon emissions by 15 percent.

“That’s the crux of the “Initial Vision Scenario for 2035,” which was released in March by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments. The report envisions that while the Bay Area’s population grows from 7 million to 9 million people, San Francisco will add roughly 90,000 households, pushing its population to around 1 million.”

The one question that no one seems to ask is “Why?”

Why does SF have to grow to a city of a million before we address the transit and infrastructural issues?

Why do we have to urgently build more residences for people who do not live here yet when so many who already do live here are suffering homelessness, job loss and an inability to keep up with the cost of living in San Francisco?

Why do we have to build housing for people who don’t yet live here before working on cleaning up the Bay, preserving our heritage, adding better, smarter transportation and sustainable energy resources?

Why do we have to appease the nouveau-riche of our times: twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds from elsewhere who want to live and work in our beautiful city for companies that make money for investors who live elsewhere which – thanks to the board and the Twitter Giveaway – will contribute little to our economy?

In reality, we don’t.

Vote Karthik Rajan and we can put a stop to this rampant, unchecked development and add stronger checks and balances against the commercial uglification of our City – in keeping with our own heritage as the most progressive city in the U.S.

It seems like new architects of the City want it to be for a rich, upper-class from elsewhere who will redefine SF into a 21st Century playground for the very wealthy. The America’s Cup is a prime example of an engine for this development.

I beg you to resist. Vote Karthik Rajan for Mayor. It will be a revolutionary moment in our City’s history and we will slow the development to a reasonable pace. I have the scalar vision to see through the rushed development our politicians now shove through the governmental system and I can lead us to more creative, more sensible and slower growth.

These plans are nonsensical because there is no need to grow like Manhattan and Hong Kong and other places have. It’s 20th century thinking that creates immense, unmanageable cities with vast disparity and horrifyingly under-served populations.

We are smarter than that – this is San Francisco! – we can slow this down and grow our own way. I know it. But we have to have leadership that is willing to stand up to crazy development talk.

Right now Interim Mayor Lee and Board President Chiu are failing to do this, rather they step on the gas for more and more growth. They remind me of the insane developers I saw in Hong Kong in the 1990’s crazily growing the city without concern for those who would be ground down or out.